Gov. Mike Pence (R) has decided to join seven other states in reinstating work requirements for food stamps despite being eligible for a federal waiver from those rules for the coming fiscal year.

Federal rules require able-bodied, childless people who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for more than three months a year to demonstrate that they are working or attending a job training program for at least 20 hours a week. But those rules can be waived during times of high economic strain when the work requirements cannot reasonably be fulfilled. Nearly every state requested and received such a waiver during the Great Recession. But a growing number of states have begun reinstating the work rules even though the Department of Agriculture has said their unemployment rates are still high enough to justify waiving the rules.

The state estimates that 65,000 people will be affected by Pence’s change, according to the Indianapolis Star. Previous similar moves in Kansas, New Mexico, Maine, and other states have left tens of thousands of people without access to food stamps. The network of food charities that picks up the slack when hungry people are underserved by government programs is already overstretched around the country, according to the people who run those charities.

“It’s ironic that in a year in which Republican governors are leading some of the states that are making the most progress, that they almost, without exception, are classified as having a bump in their unemployment rates,” he said in a clip circulated by the Democratic Governors Association. “Whereas states that are under Democrat governors’ control, they are all showing that their unemployment rate has dropped. And I don’t know how you account for that. Maybe there is some influence here that we don’t know about.”

It is immoral to extend a meager monthly allowance to unemployed Americans still looking for work more than six months after losing their jobs, according to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), which is why he and his fellow House conservatives are blocking Democrats’ efforts to reinstate the safety net program.

“I believe it is immoral for this country to have as a policy extending long-term unemployments [benefits] to people rather than us working on the creation of jobs,” Sessions said Tuesday on the House floor in response to questions about his party’s refusal to allow a vote on reinstating the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/02/05/3252031/sessions-unemployment-benefits-immoral/

host Chris Wallace pointed out that Elway was a “big Republican” who had contributed “a lot of money” to former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

“Why do you support the GOP?” Wallace wondered.

“Well, it goes to what my beliefs are,” Elway explained. “I believe that we’re giving the opportunity to succeed or not succeed.”

“I don’t believe in safety nets,” he continued. “Obviously, we’ve got to have some kind of safety nets. But I think my philosophy is when given the opportunity to go take advantage of that, I think that’s when you get the best out of people.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/02/john-elway-to-fox-news-im-republican-because-i-dont-believe-in-safety-nets/

@assholeofday It's hypocritical of him to say that, he lost 3 #Superbowl s and the Broncos didn't go out of business, where's the logic?

— Franklin (@whistlereport) February 3, 2014

LAFFER: Yeah, well the minimum wage makes no sense whatsoever to me. I mean, honestly, it’s just the teenage — black teenage unemployment act and this is the very groups that we need to have jobs not be put out of work because of the minimum wage so I’m really very much in favor of at least for teenagers getting rid of the minimum wage so we can bring them back into the labor force, get them the skills they need to continue being productive members of our society for years and years. I mean, that’s the way I’d go on minimum wage.

1. A minimum wage keeps people who aren't worth paying the minimum wage from finding jobs. That's something economists can debate, so we'll leave that argument for the economists.
2. Black teenagers are unemployed because they are so worthless that the minimum wage is too much to pay for their services. He doesn't mention any other groups-- white teenagers, Hispanic, etc. Only black teenagers.

“I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers,” he said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy.”

http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/rand-paul-concern-trolls-the-unemployed

But his contention that helping people secure food, shelter and other necessities is a “disservice” to the long-term unemployed is really annoying, right up there with Paul Ryan’s perpetual claims that his budget proposals are anti-poverty measures.

The paternalism reflected in these attitudes is obviously breathtaking. If the long-term unemployed actually could go out and get jobs and are simply refusing to do so because they prefer living on next to nothing at public expense, then Paul might well be righteously angry at them, not condescending. If he’s wrong about their motives and their opportunities, then again, he should come right out and say it’s not America’s problem that they can’t find jobs.

Where Paul and Ryan alike go fatally adrift is in identifying economic success with virtue, and lack of success with a lack of virtue. Thus we are to believe that when the housing and financial markets collapsed late in the Bush administration, many millions of people suddenly lost their character along with their financial assets and their jobs. And so many conservatives think using public resources to help them is by definition the subsidization of vice.

If, of course, the Great Recession and the period since is in fact not a passion play about the consequences of national profligacy exemplified by easy credit for those people, and is instead, as the evidence everywhere suggests, a classic demand-side depression, then the long-term unemployed aren’t moral lepers but largely the victims of bad policy, and helping them isn’t a moral hazard but part of an intelligent strategy for boosting consumer demand, as Paul Krugman points out in his latest column.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_12/a_disservice048114.php